Louisiana State University

Tulane University

Chief Technology Officer at Vor Biopharma

• Responsible for the development of platform R&D strategies for Genomic Medicines.
• Responsible for identifying and driving the optimal path for implementation of Genomic Medicines R&D strategies across Danaher Operating Companies.
•Lead scientific and technical diligence efforts related to external R&D collaborations, venture investments, and M&A opportunities for Genomic Medicines.

https://www.danaher.com

Danaher Corporation

Chief Scientific Officer & Chief Technology Officer (Genomic Medicines)

• I advise the RA Captial ventures team on new opportunities in the cell and gene therapy space.
• I advise RA Captial ventures funded biotech companies.

https://www.racap.com

RA Capital Management, L.P.

Advisor

•I built and led the technical operations (TechOps) teams that were responsible for the scale out and manufacture of Vor's investigational drug products: CRISPR gene edited hematopoietic stem cells (eHSC) and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell based therapies for AML and related myeloid malignancies.  The team was responsible for leading module 3 efforts for Vor's CTA and IND applications.
•I built and led the team responsible for establishing and scaling out Vor's Cancer Immunotherapy efforts.  
•I helped to build Vor’s CAR-T immunotherapy pre-clinical research and development efforts.

Vor Biopharma

Chief Technology Officer

Executive Director, Process Design
-I led a team of 41 engineers and scientists responsible for the design and development of manufacturing processes for CAR and TCR based autologous gene modified cell therapy products for the Kite pipeline.
-My team was also responsible for process characterization and life cycle management of new unit operations related to Yescarta.
-My team contributed to the successful BLA filing and approval of Tecartus for relapsed/refractory Mantle Cell Lymphoma.

Kite Pharma

Executive Director, Process Design

Mustang Bio

Chief Scientific Officer

-First full-time employee to join Mustang Bio.
-I led the hiring and build out of the following teams: pre-clinical, process development, analytical development, and manufacturing.
-Established and led overall process development, analytical development, and manufacturing strategy for novel gene therapies, including Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR-T)  cellular immunotherapies for glioblastoma, AML, lymphoma, and other indications.
-Oversaw CRO and CMO activities.
-Oversaw the transfer of research-based manufacturing methodologies into process development and developing industrial processes to ensure robust manufacturing at scale.
-Led immunotherapy and combination immunotherapy research and development pre-clinical studies in relevant in vitro and in vivo mouse models of cancer.
-Participated in due diligence and external evaluation of cancer immunotherapy and gene therapy assets  for in-licensing opportunities.

Vice President, Process and Analytical Development

-Head of group involved with analytical development and characterization efforts related to patient cell therapy products for pivotal clinical trials of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell immunotherapies.
-I led early process design/development projects aimed at improving the overall manufacturability of CAR-T immunotherapies.
-Head of Analytical/Biomarker Discovery Strategy for non-pivotal PoC clinical trials of CAR-T cell immunotherapies. 
- I led the development of high-throughput analytical assays, (i.e. CyTOF and SOMALogics) to capture critical product quality attributes/biomarkers of gene modified T cell therapy products for the immunotherapy of cancer.
-I represented Process & Analytical Development in cross-functional CMC project teams & drug program teams.
-I contributed to the IND, BLA, and MAA applications for the Novartis CD19 CAR-T therapy for Pediatric ALL and Lymphoma (Kymriah).

Novartis

Cell and Gene Therapies Unit (Head of Early Analytical Development)

-I was directly responsible for the manufacture of 30 lots of autologous gene modified cell therapy products used in the immunotherapy of Stage III and Stage IV cancer patients.  This included TIL, TCR, and CAR T cell therapy products.
-I co-developed a GMP manufacturing process for Kite Pharma's CD19 CAR transduced T cell therapy platform, which enabled Kite’s BLA (Yescarta) for lymphoma.
-I was in charge of all flow cytometry quality control (QC) release analytics for the GMP cell therapy manufacturing facility; the facility regularly manufactured over 150 autologous cell therapy products on an annual basis.
-I conducted biomarker discovery, research and process development projects aimed at improving the clinical efficacy  of cancer immunotherapy.
-I worked in the group of Dr. Steven Rosenberg (NCI) and Dr. Mark Dudley (NCI).

The National Institutes of Health

The Surgery Branch (Research Biologist)

-I was part of a research team that focused on elucidating the innate immune mechanisms involved in driving autoimmune pathologies, with a specific focus on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
-Utilized deep proteomic profiling approaches to identify novel auto-antigens that mediate SLE pathology.
-I developed an unbiased bioinformatic strategy to identify transcriptional regulators  of human primary dendritic cells responses to lupus specific auto antigens.  This led to a peer-reviewed first author publication (Cell Immunol. 2013 Jul-Aug;284(1-2):119-28).

Johnson & Johnson

Discovery Immunology (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

-I worked in the group of Dr. Jim Wilson (UPenn) and collaborated with Dr. Dan Rader (UPenn).
-Led gene therapy studies for rare disease, homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), overseeing idea through pre-clinical GLP toxicology studies in rodents and non-human primates.  
-I optimized AAV vector and transgene constructs within the context of application to liver and lung specific indications.
-My work led to several first author peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.
-The AAV8 based gene therapy drug product I optimized was tested by RegenexBio’s RGX-501 in patients with Familial Hypercholesterolemia.

Sadik Kassim